Failure Analysis Engineer - Materials

As a Failure Analysis Engineer at Zipline, you will own the triage, execution, and success of Failure Analysis for consequential hardware failures. You will determine what failed, how it failed, why it failed, and what physical evidence supports that conclusion, working between Failure Analysis and Material Science. Your work will directly influence product reliability, fleet health, design decisions, supplier controls, qualification testing, manufacturing processes, and future product architecture. You will partner with engineering teams on root cause, containment, corrective actions, validation, and issue closure, and ensure lessons learned are shared across programs.

Responsibilities

• Lead evidence-based investigations of consequential test, manufacturing, supplier, and field failures; determine the physical failure mechanism, and establish confidence in the conclusion.
• Own Failure Analysis cases from intake through technical conclusion, including hardware handling, inspection strategy, test sequencing, laboratory execution, external lab coordination as needed, technical documentation, and communication of results.
• Preserve and develop physical evidence through appropriate inspection and analytical workflows including optical microscopy, SEM/EDS, CT, FTIR, cross-sectioning, metallography, mechanical testing, and related techniques while maintaining traceability through the entire process.
• Identify mechanisms such as fatigue, overload, corrosion, stress-corrosion cracking, embrittlement, wear, delamination, porosity, contamination, processing defects, coating failures, and other material or manufacturing-driven failure modes.
• Build standardized Failure Analysis workflows, report formats, evidence-handling practices, confidence assessments, and failure-mechanism nomenclature so investigations are consistent and reusable across the company.
• Build and maintain a centralized, searchable body of Failure Analysis knowledge that allows repeat and cross-program failure mechanisms to be tracked and connected
• Partner with design, manufacturing, reliability, supplier quality, test, systems, and operations teams to ensure Failure Analysis findings influence design standards, supplier requirements, qualification testing, inspection criteria, maintenance strategy, and fleet decisions.
• Review proposed corrective actions and provide technical expertise and evidence to ensure they address the identified physical failure mechanism.
• Drive measurable outcomes including the quality and coverage of investigations, prevention of repeat failure mechanisms, recognition of recurring patterns across programs, and the number of engineering decisions improved or de-risked by Failure Analysis evidence.

Requirements

• 3+ years of hands-on experience in Failure Analysis, Materials Science, Materials Engineering, or a related hardware engineering discipline.
• Demonstrated experience independently investigating hardware failures and developing defensible conclusions from physical evidence.
• Hands-on experience with multiple Failure Analysis and materials characterization techniques such as optical microscopy, SEM/EDS, metallography and cross-sectioning, CT/X-ray inspection, FTIR, hardness testing, mechanical testing, DSC,TGA, or similar analytical methods.
• Strong understanding of material failure mechanisms including fracture, fatigue, corrosion, wear, material degradation, manufacturing defects, and environmentally assisted failure.
• Deep expertise in Failure Analysis of at least one major class of engineering materials or hardware (metals, polymers, adhesives, coatings, solder systems, composites, or electronic/mechanical assemblies), with demonstrated ability to apply first-principles analytical reasoning across unfamiliar materials and failure mechanisms.
• Ability to design an investigation from first principles
• Experience developing laboratory methods, technical documentation, databases, or institutional Failure Analysis processes.
• Experience working with external analytical laboratories and suppliers
• Must-have traits: deep curiosity, clear owner mentality, disciplined evidence handling and documentation, strong technical judgment, comfort operating with incomplete information, and a bias toward finding the simplest investigation that can decisively answer the engineering question.
• Location: role is based in South San Francisco.
• Must be eligible to work in the US.